Conventionally, there are known sample imaging apparatuses which image stained blood smears magnified by a microscope and analyze the obtained image to classify blood cells and perform a counting operation.
An automatic blood image analyzing apparatus for automatically classifying white blood cells is described in JP-A-S56-154647. The automatic blood image analyzing apparatus detects a white blood cell by scanning a sample prepared by smearing blood with a microscope for a constant time period, automatically performs a focusing operation after the detection of the white blood cell, converts an image of the white blood cell into an analog electric signal via a television camera and a television camera control unit, obtains various amounts of the characteristics necessary for a characteristic extraction circuit to classify the white blood cell on the basis of a digital image signal of the white blood cell from an A/D converter circuit, and classifies the white blood cell by a microcomputer on the basis of the amounts of the characteristics. If the classification result is an unknown cell or an abnormal white blood cell, the automatic blood image analyzing apparatus stores the digital image signal together with the specimen number of the sample for specifying the image signal and the type of the white blood cell in a cartridge magnetic tape apparatus. When a user wants to perform a sample review after the examination of plural samples, the contents of the cartridge magnetic tape apparatus are read through input from an operator station and a certain white blood cell or an abnormal white blood cell is displayed on an image display apparatus. The displayed certain abnormal white blood cell is then reclassified by human judgment.
There is a disease characterized by the form of a certain type of blood cell, a disease in which a certain type of blood cell is easily misclassified, or the like. For a specimen of a patient having such a disease, it is necessary to mainly re-examine a certain type of blood cell by visual observation carried out by an inspecting engineer or a doctor. However, the automatic blood image analyzing apparatus described in JP-A-S56-154647 is not suitable for such cases.